Читать книгу Leonie of the Jungle - Joan Conquest - Страница 14

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"And make my seated heart knock at my ribs

Against the use of nature. Present fears

Are less than horrible imaginings."—Shakespeare.

Big Ben announced the approaching hour of midnight, throwing the sonorous notes to the soft spring wind which wafted them up to Harley Street.

Save for the light thrown by the dancing flames of a log fire, and the orange disc made on the desk by the light of a heavily shaded lamp, the room was dark; the silence broken only by the occasional crackle of the wood fire and the faint rustle as Sir Jonathan turned a page.

"Notes" was written in letters of brass across the thick book heavily bound in leather, and of which the small key to the massive Bramah lock was kept in a pocket especially made in every waistcoat Sir Jonathan possessed.

Slowly he read through the page he had just written, crossing a t, dotting an i, adding or scratching out a word of the writing which was in no way more legible than that of any other surgeon; and when he had read he ran his hand through the mass of snow-white hair, sighed, and pushed the book further back on to the desk.

It is an eerie sound that of someone speaking aloud to himself, and still more eerie when it occurs in the middle of the night when the only part of the speaker to be clearly seen is the strong white hands moving in the orange disc thrown on the desk by the heavily shaded lamp.

And it is a strange habit this talking aloud of the solitary soul.

Mad?

Not a bit.

Dumb in the babel and din of chaotic midday, unresponsive to the uncongenial matter around, it will talk on subjects gay and grave, and even laugh with the silent sympathetic shades of midnight.

Nevertheless it is mighty eerie to hear it unawares.

For the twentieth time the famous specialist picked up a letter and read it from beginning to end.

"Strange, Jim, old fellow," said he as he laid it down, "strange how I think of you to-night. Seeing your little one, I suppose. But somehow to-night more than ever I feel the blank you made in my life when you left. How you'd have loved the kiddie, Jim. Strange wee soul with a shadow already on her life—a big black shadow, Jim, which I—I am going——!"

He turned his head and looked over his shoulder.

"Ugh!" he said, as he turned back to the desk and drew the book towards him.

"Leonie Hetth—age seven—walks in her sleep and dreams—dreams are evidently of India—things that walk softly and purr—a small light—and wet red which may mean blood—green eyes and a black woman who—who——"

Once more he ran his hand through his hair, but time irritably, then shook his head from side to side rubbed his hand across his eyes.

"I've been sitting up too late these last few nights over that opium case. Don't seem to be able to collect or hold my thoughts. Jim, old fellow, I wonder what made you leave Leonie in the care of that damn silly, shallow woman, and I wonder how you could ever have produced anything so highly strung and temperamental as your little daughter. I sup——"

He stopped quite suddenly and rose, standing with his head bent forward.

There was not a sound!

Feeling for the arm of his chair with his face still turned to the curtained window he sank back, only to spring upright with a bound.

Noiselessly, swiftly he crossed to the window, and pulling back the curtain an inch or two peered out into the small garden with its one tree and border of shrubs.

There was no sound and nothing moved.

"Strange!" he muttered, "I could have sworn some-one knocked."

He jerked back the curtains so that they rasped on the brass rod, letting in the almost blinding glare of the full moon which drew a nimbus from the silvery head and threw shadows which danced and gibbered by the aid of the log fire over the walls and ceiling, and in and out of the open safe.

He turned, but stopped abruptly when half-way across the room, standing stock still with his back to the window.

There was a faint distinct tapping as though slender fingers were beating a ghastly, distant drum.

It stopped—it continued—it stopped.

Then fell one little solitary rap like a drop of water falling on a metal plate, and it died away into silence.

And Sir Jonathan threw up his fine old head and laughed.

"Surely I've got India on the brain to-night, and as surely I want a good long holiday," he said, as he sat down at his desk and picked up his pen. "And I must remember to tell the gardener to clip that tree to-morrow. How Jan will laugh when I tell him that I was absolutely scared by a branch rubbing against the window."

For five long minutes he sat frowning down at the pen in his hand. Three times he commenced to write, and three times he stopped; twice he lit a cigarette and let it go out, and deeper grew the lines between the brows and round the mouth, until he shivered and turned quickly in his chair.

"That felt just like a sea-fog creeping up behind; stupid to keep the window open even in spring," he said as he picked up a log from a basket by his side and threw it deftly into the wide-open grate, leant sideways to separate two brass ornaments on a table which had jangled one against the other, and sighing turned restlessly in his chair.

"Confound those great market lorries," he muttered, looking round the room with its cabinets and shelves filled with the strange and weird, beautiful and unsightly curios he had brought back from every corner of the globe. "They shake the house enough to bring it down about one's ears."

The moon was slowly shifting as he leant back and settled himself comfortably in the high leather chair; the room was getting darker and there had fallen that intense almost palpable stillness which envelops most great cities after midnight, and against which his thoughts stood out like steel points upon a velvet curtain.

Clear and sharp as steel they shot indeed, this way and that through his mind; but hold them he could not, analyse or arrange them he could not, neither would his hand move towards the pen a few inches from the finger-tips.

"God!" he suddenly thundered, striking the arm of the chair with his fist. "The answer is just there on the tip of my tongue—before my very eyes—within reach of my fingers, and yet I cannot grasp it—ah! why! could it possibly be——"

He rose as he spoke and crossed to a massive bookcase packed to overflowing with books, switched on a light hanging near, opened the glass door and ran his hand lovingly over the leather volumes.

Then he very gently laid his hand on his left shoulder and turned with a smile lighting up his face, which abruptly went blank in astonishment.

"Upon my word," he said, "whatever made me think that Jan had come in and had put his hand upon my shoulder. Old fool that I am to-night."

For a moment he stood looking into the shadowy corners, then turned again to the case, ran his finger along a row of books until he came to one with the title "India," pulled it out and opened it under the light.

The book opened quite suddenly and wide, and his eyes fell on the first few lines. Without a movement he stood staring down at the printed words, reading to the end of the page, then he violently closed the book, thrust it back into the case, and closing the doors, pressed against them with both hands as though in an endeavour to keep back something which was trying to get out.

"No! my God! No! never! not that—not that as an end—not for that baby—and yet——"

He moved across to the desk, sank heavily like a very old man into his chair and covered his face with his hands.

Then very slowly and as though against his will he uncovered his face, and leaning forward stared across to the bookcase whilst he groped for the pen beside the book.

"And the cure," he muttered, "the remedy—I must find it—I—I——"

His heart was thudding heavily with the merest suspicion of a complete pause between the beats, his hand trembled almost imperceptibly, whilst his eyes glanced questioningly this way and that.

"I don't understand, I don't understand!" he whispered, just like a frightened child as he plucked at his collar and moved his head quickly from side to side as though trying to loosen some stranglehold about his neck.

He turned and stared unseeingly into the fire with the look of perplexity deepening on his face, then slowly he raised his eyes, first to the delicate tracings of the Adams mantelpiece, then to the varied ornaments on the shelf.

"Tish!" he said impatiently as they roved from the central figure of benign undisturbed Buddha, to a snake of brass holding a candle, and on to a blatant and grotesque dragon from China.

For a second he stared uncomprehendingly, then raised his head.

Inch by inch his eyes moved until they reached the top shelf of the overmantel and stopped. A shiver shook him as he lay back in his chair, his widespread fingers clutched at the chair arms, a tiny bead of perspiration showed upon the broad forehead.

Staring down at him, shining evilly in the moonlight, was a glistening, unwavering eye.

Just a slanting mother-o'-pearl eye in the battered head of a god or goddess of India, with features almost obliterated by the passage of centuries.

For a full minute Sir Jonathan sat staring up at the eye which stared back; then moving with a convulsive jerk, ran both hands through the mane of silvery hair as though to lift some crushing load from about his head; and turning sideways in his chair stretched out one hand between the eye above and his own as he clumsily seized the pen in the shaking fingers.

"Ah! my God!" he muttered, "the answer is still there, on the tip of my tongue, before my eyes, within reach of my fingers, and I cannot grasp it—ah!—yes——"

Slowly and with infinite pain he wrote, printing the letters in thick and crooked capitals, whilst his breath whistled through the dilated nostrils and one foot beat unceasingly against the desk.

"The answer to the problem concerning Leonie Hetth is in the third volume upon——"

His hand stopped suddenly when the fingers involuntarily spread wide apart, letting fall the pen which rolled across the book; and the silvery head turned inch by inch until the grey eyes had lifted to the one shining in the shadows.

And there commenced a desperate, a bitter struggle for a child's reason, perhaps for a child's life, as the moon gently withdrew her light.

Like the clammy wraiths of fog upon the moor, like the searching tentacles of some blind monster of the sea, fear crept upon the splendid old man in this still hour of the night.

It held his hands, it was folded about his mouth, it pounded violently upon his gallant heart, whilst the eye looked him between the eyes, so that his brain was seared as strive he might to turn away his head he kept his face turned piteously upward.

"What is it," he muttered thickly, as though his tongue clove to the roof of the mouth, "what is it that is pulling me, pressing upon me, choking me! I have no body, no—no hands—I—have—no power to move—I——"

And then he screamed, though but a whisper fell, as with a spasmodic jump of his whole body he flung himself round in his chair, and cowering low against the arm, peered into the deepening shadows.

"All round about me," he whispered, "all about me those hands are pulling, and yet—and—and——"

He laughed until his face, a white cameo against a grey velvet pall, grinned like a mask of mirthless death, as slowly he raised one clenched fist and shook it weakly until it fell back with a dull thud, useless, against the chair.

"I thought I was afraid—I—I thought I saw—I saw death behind—but I—I shall not die until—until I have written—written—what is it I am to write—ah! yes!"

Searching sideways with his left hand he groped and found the pen, then very carefully, very slowly turned towards the desk.

He drove the pen in fiercely, making a thick black mark; he pushed it until the nib stuck, spluttered, and broke as he flung out both hands as if grasping at something which evaded him.

"Gone!" he mouthed, though there was no sound of speech in the room. "Gone—gone!" and he suddenly tore at his collar and his cuffs as though to break some bond which held him, as he glanced furtively about the room.

For one long moment he sat leaning forward, staring far beyond the Indian screen upon which his eyes were fixed, and then slowly, almost imperceptibly, his head moved.

The drawn white face had the hunted look of some animal at bay, the agonised eyes moved as the head moved; slowly, slowly, inch by inch, the breath coming stertorously as the mouth tried vainly to frame some word.

The moon had gathered the last fold of her silvery raiment about her and was creeping away through the open window just as Sir Jonathan looked straight up into the eye gleaming malevolently through the gloom.

And as he looked the head moved gently so that the eye leered cunningly into the distorted face beneath; it, hovered for a fraction of time on the edge of the shelf and fell, just as the old man, with a blinding flash of understanding sweeping his face, sprang to his feet, stood upright, swayed forward, and fell back sideways, dead, across his chair, staring across the room into eternity with eyes full of knowledge and infinite horror.